I have been asked often about my position on Instant Runoff Voting [also known as Ranked Coice Voting]. My answer is always that I just haven’t formed an opinion on the basics of IRV. I do, however, have a problem with the fact that those who are avid supporters of IRV quite often favor IRV over voting system issues. They tend to be willing to turn a blind-eye to the use of voting systems that I would never support because there are no voting systems that actually support IRV that are federally certified.

Two west-coast counties, Pierce in WA and San Francisco in CA, used Sequoia systems that were a mix and match of certified parts and tested parts that were never tested and certified to be used together. Officials in Minnesota are now talking about IRV for the future. When asked about a second or third count election, officials said they would hand-count those ballots, but officials who have done IRV say that would be a “huge nightmare”.

One of the two west coast counties is even now thinking of going back to the voters to ask that IRV voting no longer be used. We agree with this position but only until there is a system that can actually count the ballots and not be a “huge nightmare”....

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Pierce County and San Francisco had slow election returns having NOTHING to do with the ranked voting method. Both jurisdictions let post-mark date control what mailed-in ballots are valid, so the multi-day delay had mostly to do with waiting for more ballots to arrive in a close election. The delay would be identical in a vote-for-one election.

Opponents of IRV are falsely promoting a myth that IRV is hard to tally. My city of Burlington, Vermont started using IRV in mayoral elections in 2006. We had five candidates and wide voter choice, with no concerns about any "spoilers." In Vermont, ballots have to be received by the close of polls to be valid, so after the polls closed at 7 pm, the final results of the IRV tally were announced at 8:37 pm that evening. Exit polls showed voters overwhelmingly preferred using IRV to the old method. Voters had no difficulties with IRV. With higher voter turnout than recent elections, fully 99.9% of the votes in the IRV race were valid.

First, I need to make it clear that I have no opinion on IRV at this time. It is just not a priority to me.

However, I do have an opinion about how IRV is being rolled-out, especially in Pierce Co because it is in my home state. In order to accommodate IRV for local races in Pierce Co they had to push state election rules and state law to the point of near violation. They did violate common sense in their insistence, with support from Sequoia, in introducing software that was not meant to be used on their hardware. In fact, the county used software that was changed 4 times before it was put on the machines in San Francisco. In other words, Pierce Co used version 2.0.8 while San Francisco used version 2.0.12. Those four version changes were the result of failures in testing.

So my problem is not with IRV but the way it is being implemented.

I should also point out that the statement about hand-counting being a nightmare came from the County Auditor of Pierce Co. She is hardly an opponent of IRV.

And I guess that because you found this blog to comment on it is only fair to point anyone who reads this back to the source of your information where it is reported that officials in Cary North Carolina had a hell of a time hand counting just 3000 ballots.